Notre Dame Football: Julian Okwara and Liam Eichenberg tabbed as 2020 first round draft picks

With the 2019 NFL Draft RIGHT behind us, a few people have already stepped up to the mic and pronounced a mock draft for 2020. One of them is the very respected Dane Brugler from The Athletic.

In his 2020 Mock Draft, Dane has two players from the Notre Dame Fighting Irish predicted to go in the 1st round:

• OT Liam Eichenberg picked #27 overall by the Cleveland Browns
• DE Julian Okwara picked #31 overall by the Los Angeles Rams

Okay, a few things here.

I love Liam Eichenberg, and fully believe he is going to have a monster season for Notre Dame in 2019. Still... that’s still a projection. He had a good — not great — 2018 season. Becoming a 1st round draft pick would mean a major improvement on Liam’s part. There’s one other thing as well, and that’s the fact that Eichenberg will still have a year of eligibility left in 2020. Perhaps with some steady improvement, he can play his way into a top 5 or 10 selection. That’s a lot of money. (Also I REALLY want the entire starting offensive line to return in 2020).

We’ve all seen EDGE players go pretty high in the NFL Draft with a resume less than Okwara has right now. If Okwara has the type of season I think we all believe that he will have, I can’t see how he would fall out of the top 15.

I also think Khalid Kareem could go in the first round, but I’m not getting that ahead of myself. Not yet.

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